As the rapper from Brixton gets ready for his third television series, he talks about getting fit, getting high and getting what he wants
Big Narstie, the grime artist and TV personality, pats his 84kg puppy. “He’s trained to find money and he’s trained to find weed,” he explains. We are sitting on a sofa in a nondescript flat in Essex – the “man-cave,” Narstie calls it. It’s a short walk away from the large, four-bedroom house in which he lives with his partner and two children. The puppy is wearing a rose-gold collar. Narstie is wearing a gigantic diamond pendant that involves an elaborate, custom-made, jewelled portrait of the puppy. “Daddy can’t shine if his boy don’t shine,” he says.
A moment ago, I had asked him, I think, about his Bafta-nominated TV programme, The Big Narstie Show, which returns for its third series soon. But this is how it is to be in Narstie’s presence. You don’t interview him. You spend time in his vicinity and listen gratefully as the soundbites spill out of his mouth, one after the other.